The Remnant / Live-Action Films

• April 9th: the main cast keep trying to Hold the Line against the invading Nazi's for several hours after their government has actually surrendered. Truth in Television.
• Air Force One: Big Bad Ivan Korushnov and his henchmen are former soldiers of a deposed dictator who refuse to accept the collapse of his regime and try to force his release by hijacking Air Force One.
• In Apache, Massai refuses to surrender when Geronimo does, and escapes to wage a one-man war against the US Army. He regards himself as the last Apache warrior, and even refers to himself as "the last true Apache" at one point.
• At Home Among Strangers involves a White Russian bandit gang, some time after the Whites have been decisively defeated by the Bolsheviks in the Russian Civil War, still roaming the Russian interior, robbing trains. There are still some true believers, but bandit leader Brylov recognizes that the war has been lost, the Bolsheviks are victorious, and there's no point fighting them anymore.
• In The Burmese Harp, a Japanese POW is tasked by his British captors with getting a Japanese unit holed up in a cave to surrender, since Japan has surrendered and the war is over. The POW fails, the Japanese in the cave refuse to give up, and they are annihilated. The POW eventually stays in Burma as a monk, helping locate and bury all Japanese dead, vowing to only return to Japan once he's finished.
• The Damned is about a group of Nazis and Nazi collaborators who flee to South America in a U-boat in April 1945, hoping to set up The Remnant as German defeat looms in Europe. When a German cargo ship encounters the sub and tells them that Germany has surrendered and the war is over, the Nazi Party fuctionary in charge of the submarine promptly torpedoes the cargo ship.
• Bane's army in The Dark Knight Rises represents the remnants of the League of Shadows, a sinister organization decimated by Batman in the first movie of the series.
• The Day of the Triffids: The crews of several navy submarines avoid being blinded because they are submerged when everyone else loses their sight and broadcast radio messages to alert survivors that they're willing to ferry people to safety.
• DC Extended Universe:
  • In Man of Steel, Zod and his followers position themselves as the sole remnant of the Kryptonian civilization and seek to restore it. They're also the only ones left of Zod's Civil War army, the Sword of Rao.
  • In the Bad Future seen in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Zack Snyder's Justice League, Batman, Cyborg and Flash are the only Justice League members who are still alive (Darkseid and/or evil Superman wiped out the rest). They are joined by Mera, and even by two members of Batman's Rogues Gallery, Deathstroke and the Joker. It is safe to assume everyone else that they knew has perished.
• The Dead: Several African army units continue operating, trying to gather survivors to take to various citadels, or protect their home villages, well after central authority has collapsed.
• The villains in Dead Again in Tombstone are Col. Jackson Boomer and his gang of Confederate renegades who are seeking the horn of Lucifer in order to raise an undead Confederate army.
• Die Hard:
  • Col. Stuart and his team of mercenaries from Die Hard 2 who think their government backed the wrong side.
  • Another example would be Simon Gruber's unit of East German Special Forces from Die Hard with a Vengeance, who were trained to speak fluent English for infiltration operations and were disbanded after the Soviet Union fell.
• In Gladiator, the Germanic tribes who refused to bow before the might of the Roman empire's legions. Unusually for such a trope, though they are clearly the antagonists to Maximus' protagonist, Maximus shows respect for their capabilities, sympathy for them, and seems to hope that Rome wouldn't give up even against such hopeless odds. Also is Truth in Television.
• In Gun Fury, Frank Slayton's gang is made up of former members of the Army of Northern Virginia. Slayton tells Jennifer that, unlike for her fiance Ben Warren, for him the war never ended.
• In Hangman's Knot, a Confederate Major and his troops are falsely led to believe the Civil War is not over, and become wanted men after they attack a Union Army wagon train in Nevada.
• The Horde: There’s mention of a French military base holding out and taking in survivors in the countryside that the character talk about reaching during the Zombie Apocalypse, although they spend all of the plot busy trying to break out of the apartment building their trapped in, so we never actually see it.
• Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was originally supposed to feature a team of Nazi die-hards as its villains. After directing Schindler's List, Spielberg didn't think he could feature Those Wacky Nazis as villains again, prompting him to change the villains to Soviets.
• Iron Sky: The antagonists comes from a Nazi moon base that emerges to attack Earth during the 21st century.
• Jonah Hex (2010): Quentin Turnbull and his Southern terrorists.
• The Last Flight Of Noahs Ark has two Japanese soldiers on a lost island.
• Last of the Dogmen: The Cheyenne Dog Soldiers have been living in the unexplored Montana wilderness for 128 years since they fled the Sand Creek Massacre, and have had no contact with the modern world beyond a few violent encounters with intruders.
• The Last Samurai has Nathan and Katsumoto's samurais fighting against the Meiji government.
• In The Librarian: Curse of the Judas Chalice, the bad guys are ex-KGB, who are pissed at the fall of the USSR and seek to revive the old superpower by raising a vampire army. Little do they know that the old decrepit professor they're dragging along is Dracula himself.
• The Living Dead Series:
  • Dawn of the Dead (1978). A National Guard unit is briefly seen intact in the countryside, effectively fighting the zombies alongside of the local farmer. There also appears to be some form of central authority (represented by Dr. Rausch) giving emergency broadcasts to anyone still listening for several weeks after the initial outbreak overruns the cities.
  • Dawn of the Dead (2004). Local military base Fort Pastor holds out for a while, providing a Safe Zone Hope Spot.
  • Day of the Dead (1985) features a handful of soldiers still guarding the Sole Surviving Scientist team, but by the movie's beginning, their are fed up by the lack of progress, and almost all of them turn on their civilian charges by the end.
  • Diary of the Dead. All of the military officials who the main characters encounter in the film have deserted by that point, with one group being holed up inside a warehouse of food. Another group is driving through the countryside and robbing the main characters, possibly due to believing that they've been looting themselves. A more traditional group, containing four men wearing Hazmat suits and plexiglass masks posts a video online of themselves searching houses for survivors, and gunning down some Zombie Advocates they encounter.
• Long John Silver: When Silver and Jim arrive return Treasure Island, they find Israel Hands and a handful of pirates who survived the events of Treasure Island (1950) are still stranded on the island, and out for revenge.
• The Matrix: the second movie reveals that Zion has repeatedly been wiped out, save for a few dozen survivors who are allowed to become this, rebuild and go to war with the machines all over again.
• In Outpost, a team of mercenaries are hired to scope out an old World War II bunker in war-torn Eastern Europe at the behest of a mysterious scientist. It soon becomes apparent that the bunker was a secret research facility into reality-bending experiments done by the Nazis... and that the bunker's last garrison might not be as dead as they should be.
• In The Scavengers, a gang of Confederate renegades takes over a frontier town two months after the war has ended, intending to rob a Yankee gold shipment. It seems most of the men are not aware the war has ended, but their commander Captain Harris certainly is.
• The First Order in Star Wars: The Force Awakens is a successor of the original Galactic Empire; note that the Legends continuity already had done something similar, as shown in the Literature folder below. Thanks to some drastic actions on their part, the First Order manages to step out of this shadow by the sequel. It's strongly implied that they were deliberately playing this up so the New Republic wouldn't realize they were a genuine threat until they'd already finished their build up and attacked their now-demilitarized conquerors. In a twist to this, the First Order wasn't simply a remnant, but rather, a shadow of an even greater threat—Darth Sidious' Final Order, a new Empire under Sith rule.
  • Confirmed in the Before the Awakening novel that says the New Republic know that the First Order are villainous but can't legally attack them without proof so they secretly funnel resources to Leia's Resistance group.
• The aptly titled The Undefeated starring John Wayne and Rock Hudson dealt with a group of Confederate soldiers who chose to move to Mexico and offer their support to Emperor Maximillian.
• Captain Jim West fights ex-Confederate terrorists at the start of Wild Wild West.
• Willow: Airk is introduced leading the remaining soldiers of a kingdom (which has been conquered by Bavmorda) in a last ditch battle. Many scenes later, it's revealed that he lost that battle and has gone into hiding with his last few dozen soldiers before Willow recruits them to help fight Bavmorda in the climax.